Novell in Microsoft’s crosshairs?

“This is not about competing with Microsoft. This is about addressing the impediments holding Linux back,” says Chris Stone, Novell’s Vice Chairman in the office of the CEO. What a great quote! I have worked with Chris in the past having invested in his prior company, Tilion. Chris is a smart guy and thinks big. Who in their right mind will tell Microsoft that they are competing directly with them? But let’s face it, Novell’s strategy is to ride the Linux wave by offering a complete enterprise stack which includes server, messaging, access control and eventually desktop. Yes their desktop products acquired from Ximian and SuSE are immature and resemble a server trying to become a desktop OS. However, with time, I do believe that Novell’s ultimate goal is to get on the desktop of corporations. As for IBM’s $50mm investment in the company, who knows, but that could be a stepping stone for a possible acquisition if Novell is able to pull off its amibitious plans. At Tilion, Chris tried to revolutionize the supply chain industry by creating an on-demand view of the supply chain leveraging new technologies like XML. Backing Tilion’s vision in a December 2000 article from Internet.com, Eric Schmidt, now CEO of Google, commented, “Tilion finally allows large enterprises and exchanges to go beyond the simple enablement or automation of B2B transactions. Tilion allows you see into systems which were designed to be closed. This kind of net service will be what justifies the huge investments in B2B infrastructures and technologies such as XML.” We did not get very far with that vision as the supply chain market dissolved along with the rest of the software industry in 2001. It will be interesting to watch Novell during the next couple of years because we all know that it is about execution, and if Chris and Novell pull it off, it will be a big play. Of course the odds are stacked against them.